Final Fantasy Tactics Advance/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Alternate Character Interpretation: There are those who believe that Marche is really the villain and that Ivalice is a real world that he is committing genocide against. Word of God tells us to stop using Fridge Logic and stop asking questions.
  • Author's Saving Throw: The Radio Edition addresses Marche's motivations and the nature of Ivalice far more in order to avoid the issues players had with the game. And the sequel confirms that, whatever else he did, Marche's actions in the story don't amount to genocide.
  • Broken Base: The game itself heavily divided fans of the Tactics series on several aspects:
    • The gameplay changed significantly, removing permadeath, speeding up combat, and dividing characters into five races in a way that prevents characters from becoming cookie-cutter duplicates of each other but also limits customization options in terms of what classes any given character can take.
    • The plot is much lighter and lacks the political drama of the original. Some prefer the more straightforward plot and see it as having elements of genre deconstruction, while others see it as oversimplified and aimed at a younger audience (especially in terms of a somewhat Anvilicious aesop about not running from reality, which is normally an aesop confined to media for young children).
    • The game made traditional Final Fantasy races far more prominent, with Moogles having a major role as race rather than just a cameo as a summon, and introduced a variety of animal-themed fantasy races. Some fans liked this, while others saw it as aiming the game at a much younger audience than the more serious human-oriented political drama of the original.
    • Fans are divided regarding the legitimacy of Marche's reasoning to destroy Ivalice.
  • Crowning Music of Awesome: Hitoshi Sakimoto somehow managed to fit songs like this and this into a Game Boy Advance game.
  • Draco in Leather Pants: Mewt Randell and the Li-Grim. Neither is necessarily evil, but they qualify in a sense due to people seeing them as more sympathetic as they are, especially considering that Mewt is mainly selfish and willing to make the laws harsher against his subjects' wishes on a whim.
  • Esoteric Happy Ending: Yeah, Mewt's no longer nuts, but you're still a cripple, Doned. Ha ha ha ha.
  • First Installment Wins: While Final Fantasy Tactics Advance absolutely has its fans and defenders, the overall consensus is that the original was something unique. It's very common, for instance, to have people name the original Final Fantasy Tactics as their favorite game in the entire series (not the Tactics Gaiden Games, but the Final Fantasy franchise as a whole).
  • Game Breaker: Concentrate breaks most skills clean in half, since low accuracy is what keeps them balanced, and three races can learn it. Double Sword is also fairly ridiculous, but that's Human-only. Doublecast is terrifying when you consider that it works on Summoner abilities - yes, including Madeen.
    • The only thing worse than the above skills is using them with other classes' moves. A ninja with two swords? Unnerving. A paladin wielding two swords, both of which are insanely powerful? Scary. A paladin wielding two of the aformentioned swords and toting Ultima Shot, arguably the most powerful human spell in the game? Freaking terrifying.
      • Ultima Blow is unnecessary if you get Sonic Boom, which deals normal damage to multiple enemies at a nice range. Paladins are also capable of equipping a combination of equipment - Nagrarok, Sequence, Peytral, and Ninja Tabi - that allows them to have a total movement range of eight squares, over twice what they ordinarily have and more than enough to cover half a map by themselves. In combination, this gives them the same attack range as a Gunner.
    • Also, equipping a Bangaa Dragoon (highest attack base stat and growth in the game) with the Gladiator's Ultima Sword (triple attck damage) and the Templar's Weapon Atk+ (guess) can kill litterally anything. Yes, even the Stone Wall Toughskins. Even the 999 defense Flans. It is even possible to one-shot the final boss with this.
    • Raising a Gunner as a Mog Knight gives you access to Ultima Charge from across the screen. If it's not possible to scrounge up the MP for that, you can also spam Stopshot or Charmshot, which disable any enemies they don't outright kill. Add Counter and you have a killing machine.
    • Steal: Ability, intended as a late game accelerator pedal, can be acquired with a couple of hours of cheesing, turning it into a Disc One Nuke for both Humans and Moogles. This frees munchkins from having to waste time learning abilities and lets them move straight into stat optimization.
  • Goddamned Bats: Sprites/Titanias (particularly those with White Wind), enemy Gunners or Illusionists (who can hit you from far away), and anything equipped with Damage > MP. The latter ability results in damage reducing the target's MP instead of HP, and, worst of all, as long as the target has any MP, they will not lose HP.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: The secret character Cheney the Hunter became a lot funnier three years later.
  • Hilarity Ensues: Becomes this when you force a monster through a Beastmaster to break the law enough to get it sent to jail and removed from battle.
  • Ho Yay: Montblanc and Marche in the Radio Edition. Fighting together with Marche against most monsters without the help of anyone else, and with only little help from Nono? Check. Marche's name with massive power? Check. Lastly, saying that he will always wait for Marche at a commercial and at the very ending? Definitely check!
    • On the Les Yay side, we have Ritz and Shara who have grown very close to each other by the time Ritz tearfully throws herself into Shara's arms.
  • Memetic Mutation: While the Alternate Character Interpretation was around as long as the game has been, its popularity exploded with a hastily-drawn webcomic that had Marche proclaiming to the other characters, "FUCK THAT YOU'RE GOIN' HOME".
  • Narm: Ritz revealing why she's refusing to help Marche... because of her hair color. Bully-magnet or not, differing cultural standards or not, complex over it or not, that's one of the silliest possible reasons she could have put out for what the Gran Grimoire gave her. Hell, Shara seems to be as confused as the player!
    • Ritz does go into further detail on this when speaking with Shara in private: she hates her hair so much because her mother is always sad when she helps Ritz dye it, which is why Ritz hates her hair so much, the bullying situation notwithstanding. Shara points out that it's more than likely the other way around: Ritz's mother is sad because of Ritz's contempt for her hair.
  • Ron the Death Eater: Marche is commonly accused of many things, from selfish disregard for his friends to a desire to commit genocide, that ignore his honest attempts to get them to face their problems and his frequent moral conflict over his course of action, regardless of the rightness or wrongness of his actions.
  • Straw Man Has a Point: When Babus asks Marche if he even tried to think of another way to escape Ivalice.
    • Depending on what your interpretation is, this both applies:
      • If you think Marche is the Villain Protagonist because he wants to remove what's making everyone happy. (Especially Doned!) and would be committing genocide against Ivalice. However...
      • Marche may also see this as a Lotus Eater Machine simply because in order to make four kids happy, the entire town of St. Ivalice essentially ceases to exist .
  • Tastes Like Diabetes: Every moogle except for the Moogle Knight, who had a low voice.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks: Many of a Tactics' fans outcry when they saw Advance. Most complaints lie in the storyline for being too childish.
    • On the other hand, Electronic Gaming Monthly, nominating the game as a good holiday gift, notes that "the plot actually makes some damn sense this time."
  • Tier-Induced Scrappy: No one likes Engineers. Their mass-status effect skills are potentially game-changing... but they're also completely random, and potentially hit friendly targets. This can be compensated for by ensuring the team is immune to the conditions they could inflict, but really, it's a lot of effort for comparatively less value than just using other classes and having them equip skills and items that make them better at fighting.
  • True Art Is Angsty: Fans mainly complain how this game is not as dark and angsty as the first Final Fantasy Tactics.
    • Vindicated by History: As of 2016 with its Virtual Console release on the Wii U, there have been some people who have pointed out that while the plot concept is adolescent (it was mentioned by several magazines it was like The Neverending Story), it actually has a lot of mature themes in it that a lot of people didn't notice in 2003 such as the effects of divorce on children, the stages of grief with the death of a loved one, how disabled kids feel, bullying and the desire to retreat into fantasy as a coping mechanism, etc.
  • Viewer Gender Confusion: More or less invoked with just about all of the human characters, especially the generics: for the most part, they're all androgynous enough to be interpreted as either male or female without having to make a separate model set for each gender.
  • The Woobie: Doned. Despite that he acts like such a little shit, he actually had the most reasonable wish out of all the four (which was to be able to walk again). And in the ending, he goes back to being an Ill Boy in a wheelchair. Despite getting friends, come on...
    • Crosses over with Jerkass Woobie, and it's a similar deal with Mewt: on the one hand, he seriously lacks confidence and self-esteem and misses his mother; on the other, he prioritizes his own comfort and feelings over that of others. Both characters (and even Ritz, to a degree) have understandable desires, but go about them with disregard for anyone who disagrees.
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